The last secret_ a novel - Mary McGarry Morris [19]
The boy could share the room with his grandmother, the caseworker said, but with him in there, they couldn't use the outside lock to prevent her night-roaming. “Just lay there,” his uncle said, pushing aside the hanging clothes. “And don't get her riled up.” If she tried to get out he was supposed to wake them up. One night she did, during a violent electrical storm. He told them, but as usual they didn't believe him. Hard to with a born liar, plain and simple, his aunt complained to the caseworker. Everything about him's twisted, opposite what it should be. But what good's the truth when no one cares. Next day, the sheriff's deputy brought Vernile home, carried her into the house, so dehydrated she kept passing out. The deputy wanted to take her to the hospital, but his aunt refused. Last thing her mother would want, she said. That's when they crammed him in with the cousins, least that's how he remembers it. A few nights later, Vernile escaped again. Took a few days, but they finally found her body, down by the gulch. Nobody had to tell him they'd left the door unlocked. Even the cousins knew. Big relief, as it turned out, for everyone, the whole family. Except for him. Him, they sent back. “Just plain mean,” she said, his aunt, when the caseworker came to pick him up. “Ice in his veins. Not an ounce of feeling for anyone but himself” Real kind lady, Aunt Tina.
He continues down Lowes Road until it forks to the left along this rutted trail to the gulch.
“Where are you going?” she asks, uneasily. With every jounce, the flap of her chin jiggles up and down. She peers out the window. “What's down here?”
“I don't know. Let's see.”
“It's getting dark.”
The sky through the stunted trees is a sooty gray, the quarter moon, dull as if cut from a cloud. There used to be a clearing where his uncle dumped brush and trash, but he can't find it. POSTED. Signs nailed to the trees. NO DUMPING. All about the environment now. Preserve the pristine landscape, yeah, for the fat cats. One good thing, probably nobody comes here anymore. Even better. He smiles and pulls off the road, cuts the engine. Head back, he puts his arm over the top of her seat.
“Let's go Eddie, please? I don't like it here.”
“It's me you don't like. Admit it.” He laughs.
“No!” She looks at him. “When I said that before, about our age difference, I didn't mean that, the way it came out. I meant it as a compliment.”
Now he remembers. She had said that he didn't seem thirty years older than she was. In fact, he seemed more like someone her own age. Younger even, in a lot of ways.
“I did, really.”
“Well, thank you. I wasn't sure where you were going with it, that's all.”
His softer tone pleases her.
“This has been the greatest vacation I ever had.” She sighs and rests her head against his arm. “And I know what you said about … about taking it slow and all, but I really, really—”
He strikes, that big, soft gullet, flappy under his fingers, squeezing before she can say it, before she makes him feel more worthless. Her arms flail, her legs thrash up and down. Worst, though, is the gagging. Finally, when her bulbous eyes freeze with deadening shock, he pulls her out onto the ground, drags her by the ankles, as far into the bushy growth as he can manage. He works quickly, removing any easy means of identity, clothes and jewelry, spits on the fingers to get the rings off The second pierced earring's stuck in the lobe. He rips it out. A week, a